him a look before picking Aubrey up and carrying her over to the center of the room where several babies were playing with the communal toys.
Aubrey and I sat down with the other moms. I could feel myself starting to sweat. Hanging out with other moms always made me nervous. I was terrified of coming off as a parenting noob and highly conscious of how desperately I wanted the friendship of even just one of these women.
I sat Aubrey down and pushed a blinking jack-in-the-box toward her. Aubrey smiled and began tapping the buttons with her hands.
“Is that fun, baby?” Aubrey pressed another button and a rabbit popped out of one of the toy’s hidden doors. She screamed with delight.
I looked up at the other moms. Surely people were taking notice of me and my adorable child having a Hallmark moment. Then, out of nowhere, Aubrey began to cry. I looked down just in time to see an eighteen-month-old little boy wearing a pair of brown cotton shorts and a red shirt toddling away with the toy she had been squealing over.
I scooped the hysterical Aubrey up and followed the boy to where he sat down to play. He was seated next to a young mom with blond curly hair wearing a flowing burnt-orange dress.
“Excuse me,” I said, kneeling down next to her. “My daughter was playing with that toy when your son came over and grabbed it.”
She stared at me blankly before pushing a stray hair out of her face. “I’m sorry?”
Her son was now happily playing with the toy Aubrey had had earlier while Aubrey sobbed.
“Your son, he grabbed that toy out of my daughter’s hands.” I pointed to the little boy sticking his tongue out at me.
The mom held up a hand defensively, “Please do not point at River. We point at places, not people.”
“Okay...” I said, lowering my hand.
“And I’m sorry your daughter is having a shadow experience today, but we do not force River to share.”
“You what now?” I asked, puzzled.
“We do not force River to share. River makes his own decisions. It’s part of his journey,” she said, smiling serenely.
“What? Lady—”
“Please do not gender me,” the woman said, shaking her head.
“My daughter is going to need that toy back,” I said flatly.
“Please do not gender your child,” she said, staring at me.
“Okay, that’s quite enough.” I reached down and pulled the toy away from River. He let out a squeal.
The woman was livid. “How dare you?”
A play center supervisor wearing a white shirt with the center’s logo on it walked over. “Is there a problem here?”
River’s mom stood up and put her hands on her hips. “This woman just snatched a toy out of my child’s hands!”
I struggled to stand while holding Aubrey. “Only after he took it from mine.”
David popped up. “What’s going on, Ashley?”
The employee, a man in his early twenties with a crew cut, spoke up. “It appears as if your wife took a toy from a baby.”
David looked at me, startled. “Is this true?”
“Yes, but no, he took it from Aubrey first...”
David could barely speak. “Took a toy from a baby?”
The employee put a hand on my elbow, “Ma’am, we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Fine. We don’t want to be here with this kind of lawlessness anyway.” I turned to River’s mom. “This isn’t over.”
I took a step forward and felt my foot sink into something mushy.
“What the—” I looked down and saw that I was four toes deep in a soft turd.
“I eliminated, Mama,” said River.
David laughed all the way home, and eventually even I had to giggle after replaying how I hopped through the play center on one foot to the public bathroom to wash off River’s elimination.
“You do realize we can never go back there again, right?” said David, struggling to hold back hysterical laughter.
“Do you think there’s a photo of me by the cash register?” I said, a smile playing on my lips.
“Hopefully it’s not scratch and sniff,” he said, dissolving into hysterics.
He reached over and took my hand. Our fingers intertwined as Aubrey slept in the backseat.
As we turned off of the freeway I stared at David. It felt so good to laugh again together. I studied his profile as he drove: his strong jaw, five o’clock shadow...he really was incredibly handsome. This is what I wanted when I found out we were pregnant—to just enjoy being together as a family. Sure, there was less foreign kid feces in my fantasy, but all in all, I considered the day a success. A poop-covered success.
I spend every Sunday morning doing a deep clean of my home. My littles love to help with age-appropriate jobs like wiping down silk flowers, stirring the compost and watering our bonsai trees.
—Emily Walker, Motherhood Better
Impossible Goal of the Day: Declutter everything.
My closet is no longer a closet. It is a mini-secondhand store/storage space for all of Aubrey’s things. How can a baby so small have so much stuff? I know it’s my fault, but girl clothes are so cute. How am I supposed to not spend every last dime buying clothes I never put her in? I know for a fact that her wardrobe is worth more than mine. All of the money I used to spend on myself, I now spend on her.
My postpartum body doesn’t exactly say DRESS ME UP! If it could talk, it’d probably say something like, STOP WITH ALL THE CHOCOLATE, or COVER ME WITH A BURLAP SACK.
In my closet are no less than four sizes of clothing that serve as a living monument to the old me, the pregnant me, the postpartum me and the postpartum-PMS-bloated me. I read in AllWomen magazine that your closet is a metaphor for your subconscious. If that’s true, then my subconscious is a mess and needs to be taken out back and put out of its misery.
Confession: I hate cleaning.
Does anyone else find it entirely unreasonable that a human being should be required to cook AND clean on the same day? I woke up determined to get my kitchen in a state that doesn’t make me shrink with shame. David ended up having to go into the office so I spent Aubrey’s afternoon nap wearing ill-fitting rubber gloves scouring the stove top, washing dishes, organizing cabinets, sweeping, mopping, etc.
Ridiculous
